


Mopin' on the Coastal Shelf

by weytani



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaids, F/F, Mermaids of Eriana Kwai AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9778487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weytani/pseuds/weytani
Summary: Every year, a group of young women are sent out to sea, tasked with keeping the sea demons that brutalize their island at bay. Mostly... it doesn't go well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started this a couple months ago after reading Ice Massacre, and then decided to have another crack at it after watching She Creature a dozen times. Mermaids.... are awesome..... !!
> 
> Title from The Little Mermaid's broadway musical. B)

Shaw licks at the split in her upper lip, crooking her index finger against the stock of her crossbow. She likes it up here in the crow’s nest where she can see the ship from every angle. Back when they had numbers, there’d been a set rotation for watch duty. They could sleep most nights back then.

Now, though, the mermaids love it when the sun goes down. Twenty becomes ten becomes five. Nobody gets to sleep anymore.

She and Joss share the nest most of the time. They’re the best at long-range, and frankly Shaw wouldn’t allow anyone else in her space like this for hours on end. Joss draws her into conversation now and again, but she doesn’t force it.

Martine’s got her back to the mast below, sharpening her knife as she sits cross-legged on the deck and hardly blinks like the creepy little asshole that she is. Nobody else cracks a smile when an ally is dragged overboard.

Not far away, Harper and Dani are together at the wheel, talking in hushed voices as they glance over at Martine. Frankie is circling the deck with a loaded crossbow in her hands. It’s been a couple of days since the last attack, and Shaw can tell that everybody’s getting antsy.

They come in swarms, usually. One minute the ship will be rocking lazily over the tides, and then a pale hand will grip the railing, deceptively skinny arms and human faces appearing as they pull themselves out of the sea. For every one you catch with a bolt at the edge, three more are already clawing their way across the deck.

No legs to walk on, that’s the saving grace; you get one of those bastards through the arm and they can’t move too fast, but once a mermaid gets hold of you, you’re royally fucked. The lucky ones drown before they’re ripped up for meat.

Shaw’s got bruises on every inch of her body. Blistered hands and a scar from her stomach up to her collar bone, where one particular mermaid tried to bifurcate her with the sharpened edge of a seashell.

The one responsible for that, Shaw’s had a number of encounters with, actually.

She’s seen hundreds of mermaids by now, and they’ve all started to blur together in the midst of battle. But for some reason, she always finds herself coming head-to-head with that woman- no, that _thing_.

Their third day aboard the ship, when the first attack came, that mermaid had backed her up against the mast, her crossbow sent skidding across the deck. Long, dark hair, dripping with salt water, pale skin and blood red eyes, towering over Shaw as she drew herself up on her tail like a snake. Poised to strike. There had been a storm that day, and a wave had sent the deck veering to a steep angle.  Shaw had found herself clinging to a slippery railing as the mermaid vanished from her sight.

Day seven, her new friend got a vice-like grip on her boot and tried to drag her into the ocean. She lost the boot.

Day twelve, Shaw spotted her on the quarterdeck, looked her straight in the eye, and returned her mocking smile with a bolt that missed her by inches.

Shaw got her scar at the start of the third week. That bitch had her pinned to the deck before she could cock her weapon. They were already down to seven by then, and Shaw was so busy trying to fight her off that she couldn’t do anything for the two crew members they lost that day.

The mermaid’s tail felt like a slab of concrete against her legs, and she had one of Shaw’s wrists pinned to the deck with one hand while Shaw tried in vain to tear her off with the other. She was smiling as she pressed the edge of a tusk shell against Shaw’s skin through her padded shirt. It split the fabric almost immediately.

Shaw snarled in the face of her would-be murderer and rammed the blade of John’s old knife into her shoulder. A parting gift from home, pressed into her hands before she boarded their ship, ready for the Massacre.

The shell bowed to one side in the mermaid’s hands, and she managed to rake the edge all the way up Shaw’s chest before it slipped from her grasp. Not deep enough to be a mortal wound, but enough to hurt like holy hell. Shaw could only fight for consciousness, unable to watch the mermaid fall back and disappear again, but she still remembers her scream.

The memory brings her some pleasure. Sometimes she wonders if her _friend_ had bled out in the ocean, or if she’s out there biding her time for the next strike.

“Ever feel like you’re missing something?” Joss mutters from her side. A strong breeze whips at their hair and the patchwork sails. Too many battles; they’re running out of tarp. Next will be their bedsheets.

“Beer,” Shaw answers wryly. “Clean clothes.”

“Tomas?”

Joss grins playfully when Shaw throws her a bored glance. “Not really.”

“Feels like we’re in the eye of a storm here, Shaw, and I don’t think we’re ready.”

Shaw watches Joss lean forward, pressing her forehead to one of the wooden banisters. It’s the wrong time for distraction, but Shaw can give her this. She thinks of John back home, the look he’d exchanged with Joss before he slipped Shaw the knife. Messy feelings have no place on the battlefield.

Still, if anyone’s going to make it home...

“Four days to the dock. We’ve knocked out a good fifty of theirs for every one of ours. I like those odds.”

“I’d like them more if I didn’t have to think about who’s left,” Joss says.

Martine. “She’s a good fighter.”

They peer down through the gaps in the wooden planks, watching Martine turn the handle of a knife around in her palm with her thumb and index finger. She admires the blade with a focused gaze.

“As if I wasn’t already losing sleep.” Joss rolls her eyes.

“You should rest,” Shaw says nonchalantly. In truth, they all need to. But the sky’s beginning to turn grey again, and with the dark comes all kinds of danger. “I’ll keep watch.”

Joss doesn’t move from her perch, just sighs and pulls her head back so she can watch the tide move in sloppy waves nearby. Another couple of minutes pass like this, and Shaw keeps her gaze steady even as the clouds open up with a harsh downpour.

In these conditions, she’s not surprised when Frankie calls up to them, “I hear movement against the hull below deck. Get ready.”

Shaw balances her crossbow on the nest’s railing, holding it level as she scans the water for life; a dark shadow, an unexplained ripple. But the rain complicates things.

“I can’t see a thing,” Joss says, and everything’s fine for the first three words, until Dani’s shout reaches them and the ship tilts vicariously to one side.

Joss and Shaw catch themselves before they slide right out of the nest, hanging onto the guard rails with one hand and their weapons with the other. Down below, Harper and Dani are holding tight to the helm, their feet skidding on the wet deck, and Martine’s on her side, wrapped around the mast like a cat dangling from a tree.

This isn’t the first time the mermaids have tried this, and Shaw knows the ship won’t turn on them now, just as it hasn’t on any day before. She bends her knees and hitches her feet up against the railing so she can press her back to the base of the nest. It’s not an ideal position, but their crossbows are a two-handed weapon, and Shaw knows what comes next.

As the ship leans towards the water, a crowd of hands and arms latch onto the side of the deck. Shaw waits until the first head comes into view and releases her bolt, watching it cut through the air and pierce the mermaid’s scalp mercilessly. Immediately, the body is replaced by another, and Shaw curses the wasted seconds notching her next bolt before she can fire again. Their weapons are advanced compared to their enemy’s, but still far too inefficient.

After three shots, whatever force has been pressuring their ship lets off, and Shaw almost tumbles backwards when the ship jolts back into equilibrium. Joss grabs her by the sleeve just in time, and shares a resigned grimace with her as they right themselves. Together, they fire at every mermaid in sight, alternating shots as one person stops to reload.

Still, the deck is overrun. Eventually they’re having to shoot enemies down from the ratlines as they climb towards the crow’s nest. Webbed fingers scaling the roped ladder rungs and reaching for the slits between the wooden railings, close enough for Shaw to stomp on them while Joss fires.

It’s a wild, messy fight, but Shaw thinks they’re starting to level the odds. She can see Martine’s ponytail fly as she swings her knife in calculated arcs, Frankie at her back with a crossbow as they move in tandem. Harper’s dark curls are just visible through a hoard surrounding the cabin door, and Dani—

Dani’s panicked scream rises from the forecastle, far from Shaw’s field of vision. But Joss immediately leaps the railing on her side and all but dives from the nest, leaving Shaw to clear a path for her as she descends the rope ladder. Shaw takes out as many mermaids as she can until Joss reaches the deck, and then turns to keep the rest at bay.

Joss can look out for herself, despite the heroics. Shaw knows that. So it has no bearing on her own decision to kick off from the mast and ditch their makeshift base for the scrappy battlefield below. It’s a tricky business dodging hits from swinging tails and long, pale arms grabbing for her on the way down.  Shaw dodges every blow save one; a hand that barely catches her across the face, sharp fingernails digging into her skin enough to scratch and sting as the rain licks at her fresh wound.

By the time she gets to the bottom, Joss is out of sight. The mermaids are struggling to pull themselves down from the ratlines, less agile than a being with two feet to kick around, so Shaw gets  a head start in fending off the ones on deck that don’t see her coming.

John’s knife was lost the day she stabbed that pest of a brunette, but she still has her own. Here, she draws it from the waistband of her trousers. There, a mermaid turns and bares her teeth like blades of their own in her open mouth. Her skin turns a pale shade of green as her eyes glow red, and Shaw drags the knife across her throat and takes a life in a single swing.

Shaw steps forward to head for the quarterdeck, ready to break into a run before she catches any more attention. But she doesn’t quite manage to land the second step before she’s thrown sideways off her feet, struck by a body she only recognises when it’s got her pinned down by the wrists.

“The baby bird finally came down from her nest.”

Shaw doesn’t react to the teasing words, but the fact that she speaks at all takes her off guard. The mermaids—

They’re not supposed to speak English.

“I was waiting for you,” she continues, collecting Shaw’s wrists in one hand so she can brush long fingers over the wound on her cheek.

“Should’ve stabbed you in the throat,” Shaw says dispassionately. She tests the grip on her arms, and the mermaid squeezes them harder in return. Her fin flicks against Shaw’s bare ankle as she manoeuvres herself into what’s presumably a more comfortable position to taunt her prisoner.

Chest to chest, the mermaid smiles at her, sharp teeth gleaming. “Lucky me.”

The hand not keeping Shaw down creeps up over her neck, and Shaw briefly thinks she’s about to be choked out.  But instead, cold fingers glide well past her windpipe and snag on the collar of her shirt, pulling it roughly down.

“I kept your gift.” She hunches one shoulder, drawing Shaw’s eyes to the pink aberration just under the curve of it; a testament to how fast a mermaid can heal. But this one looks like it could actually scar. Shaw’s lips twitch.

Her eyes linger on the mark, and then, of their own accord, slip down a ways. Fuck. Shaw blinks off the moment of weakness, face a blank slate. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before.

Her collar feels tight against the back of her neck, stretched low enough for Shaw’s own scar, an angry red scab in comparison, to peek into view. The mermaid stares at it intently, and then up into Shaw’s glowering eyes. “And you kept mine.”

This conversation is getting far too one-note for Shaw’s tastes. “Not like I had a choice. You going to kill me now, or just keep saying weird shit until someone else on board has the time?”

All around them, rain hammers at the deck, across a string of mermaid bodies, any number of which could be a friend or relative of this woman – and yeah, Shaw finds herself coming back to that word, even with the tail weighing down her lower body. But she doesn’t seem interested in any of it; not the blood or the screeching or the rain dripping from her hair and soaking into Shaw’s clothes.

“I wanted to bring your knife along, maybe tease you with it a little.” The mermaid’s tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth, and Shaw can see a glimpse of sharp teeth behind it.

“Cute. I’d like to tease you with a bolt, right between the eyes,” Shaw murmurs, staring intently into deep, brown pupils. Not red, which makes a change from what she’s come to expect. Maybe it’s a mood thing.

“Sounds like fun,” the mermaid says, and stares right back.

Seconds seem to tick by at the speed of glaciers, and Shaw can hear Martine shouting, feel the rain that passes from the mermaid’s cheek down to her chin and drips intimately onto Shaw’s neck. She knows their lure has no affect on women, that the exchange is just a contest of its own, and if she’s dying today, it’ll be with one more victory under her belt.

A fin flicks over her leg again, and it’s cold enough to make Shaw twitch but not surrender.

The mermaid leans closer.

“ _Root_ ,” a voice spits out from close by, or at least that’s what it sounds like. What follows is an angry slur of noises, the unfamiliar language of their species. She says “Root” again, more than once, in a way that sounds direct. Like a name.

Shaw’s attacker holds her gaze for a moment longer, and then rolls her eyes. She says something to her companion, voice losing some of its amused lilt. Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound friendly, and neither does the response that follows.

“No, by all means, I’ll just wait,” Shaw says, flexing her arms impatiently. Her allies could be dead. Joss could be dead.

The other mermaid, visible now with her curly brown hair and sharp features, doesn’t look at Shaw, but gestures at her aggressively. Says “Root” again, and then another word.

Shaw repeats it in her head, “Root”, and then out loud. The mermaid still on top of her casts a sidelong grin her way, nodding subtly, before saying something else to her companion. She lies herself flat over Shaw’s torso, and Shaw would kick her off if she had any kind of leverage on the wet deck.

And just like that, the other mermaid’s expression builds into a look of revulsion. She turns her head, rotating her upper body as if to leave the scene, and hunches down just in time to dodge the bolt that whistles by and buries itself in the deck.

Shaw looks up, and Root pushes herself up on her forearm to look too. Across the ship, Joss is standing determinedly with a crossbow in her hands. Her hair has been torn from its ponytail, and there’s a nasty looking bruise in the works under her right eye.

“Get off her now, or my next one hits the mark.”

There are bodies littered at Joss’ feet, but beyond that Shaw can see that the swarm has almost completely disbanded. Harper’s leaning against the stairway behind her, looking ragged but still very much alive. Despite everything, they might have actually won this one.

The pissed-off mermaid beside them immediately lurches towards the railing, but Root seems undecided about the whole thing. She looks at Joss, and then down at Shaw, one hand still tight around her wrists. There’ll be bruises there for a good week or so, but Shaw’s annoyed to find that she doesn’t really hate the feeling.

“Maybe next time, Root,” she says, lips twitching into a near smile. There will definitely be a next time.

Root flashes a wide-eyed smirk in return, teeth bared at her brazen attitude.

“Bye Shaw,” she whispers, and then she’s gone.

Joss lowers her crossbow with a heavy breath, all her rancour gone in an instant. She holds a hand out to help Shaw up, and Shaw takes it with a grimace. Her back hurts and her arms are numb with cold. Dani and the others come shuffling over, faces beaten and weapons still in hand.

“Friend of yours?” Harper asks, looking disgruntled.

“Same bitch who tried to cut me open.”

Joss scrutinizes her for a moment. “I think she likes you, Shaw.”

Shaw cracks her knuckles, pausing to admire the fresh marks on her wrists. True, Root hadn’t seemed in any rush to put her down. She could use that. But for now...

“So,” she says, looking around at the dead bodies piled up around their little circle. “What’s for dinner?”


End file.
